The Weak Scale as a Trigger Part I: Crunching Dilaton, Hidden Naturalness

Abstract

I discuss a new approach to the Higgs naturalness problem, where the value of the Higgs mass is tied to cosmic stability and the possibility of a large observable Universe. The Higgs mixes with the dilaton of a CFT sector whose true ground state has a large negative vacuum energy. If the Higgs VEV is non-zero and below O(TeV), the CFT also admits a second metastable vacuum, where the expansion history of the Universe is conventional. As a result, only Hubble patches with unnaturally small values of the Higgs mass support inflation and post-inflationary expansion, while all other patches rapidly crunch. I will also comment on alternative realizations of the mechanism that do not require a CFT sector and have a simple perturbative description.